A Project Manager’s take on the HealthCare.gov... A Project Manager’s take on the HealthCare.gov website mess Oct. 24th, 2013 Suzy Bates

A Project Manager’s take on the HealthCare.gov website mess

October 24th, 2013

Last week I wrote a blog post on my personal site about the negative reaction to healthcare.gov, and how the contractors who worked on the site are taking a beating. I am not going to talk about the inherent virtue or evil of the government health portals. I am going to talk about building web systems, because when your industry gets brought up before congress, you tend to take notice.

The thing which seems to really resonate with readers is the statement: “Saying ‘failure is not an option’ means that you have no plan on how to fail gracefully.”

Failing is practically a new buzzword. “Failing Fast,” “Fail Harder” are phrases heard around the biz.

Do people mean that it’s not going to work? Well, yes. Failing fast means “get it over with.” You will get something wrong, so jump in, get started and get it wrong faster so you can fix it and make it right.

It seems that this website was set up to FAIL, with no time or contingency to fix it.